Friday, January 1, 2016

Casting Out the Real Devil

Devil casting per the Bible

On
Christmas I was watching a television show on Jesus with my
brother-in-law.It was explaining how
Jesus cast out devils that lodged inside all sorts of people.The narrator said that Jesus would ask the
devil to reveal its name and then order him to leave.After a few minutes of such hogwash, I asked Michael
to change the channel.

He
wanted to know why I objected since the biblical text is loaded with devil-tossing
episodes. He’s right.They include:

And He healed many who were ill with
various diseases, and cast out many demons; and He was not permitting the
demons to speak, because they knew who He was. (Mark 1:34)

Now the woman was a Gentile, of the
Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her
daughter. (Mark 7:26)

And He went into their synagogues
throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons. (Mark 1:39)

When evening came, they brought to
Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and
healed all who were ill. (Matt: 8:16)

And He was casting out a demon, and
it was mute; when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke; and the crowds
were amazed. (Luke 11:14)

“You just don’t like religion,” my
brother-in-law said.

I disagree. I don’t like
mythological nonsense.

Gospels

The Gospels were written close to
2000 years ago.Mark is dated from about
70; then Matthew and Luke around 85; and John sometime close to 95, although it
could be later than that.As a result, none
of those writers knew a thing about psychiatry.They had no concept of chemical imbalances or how the brain functions.They didn’t understand allergies or reactions
to food, schizophrenia, psychophrenia, hallucinations or any of the others real
conditions now identified and treated by modern science.

All they knew was that people
sometimes acted strange.To them, the
cause was the devil or members of his satanic clan.Everyone one else in that region had similar ideas.So, that’s what they wrote about.That was more than a millennium after
Egyptians were conducting brain surgery.In the Middle Ages, based on the absurd biblical accounts, Western
surgeons were still (fatally) opening skulls to let "devils" out while Arab doctors
were applying poultices.

Maybe Jesus was able to help these
people, as described, but he didn’t do it by “casting” out a nonexistent entity
that was supposedly was harming an innocent victim. No sane person today could
plausibly claim that some internal demon created a problem.The lone attempt to do that, in a Connecticut
murder case, failed completely.

Wilson

The late comedian Flip Wilson turned
the phrase “the devil made me do it” into a comic catchphrase, a fate it
deserves.

The concept doesn’t even coincide
with the beliefs of those who kneel before the Gospel and believe it to have
been dictated by God.They also believe in free will. How can anyone
have free will when a devil is supposedly holding the reins?

As a result, as I told my brother in
law, I was appalled any television show would attempt to pawn off the casting
out of devils as plausible. Michael obligingly changed the channel.

Since these biblical accounts are
obviously inaccurate, what is someone who reads them supposed to think?Maybe the devil-casting tales are
metaphors.Other biblical stories are now
treated that way since they cannot be accurate.

However, anyone insisting that the
multiple devil outings were simply metaphors would expose a real weakness in
believing the texts were dictated by God.If one story, told straight forward without a hint of symbolism, is a
metaphor, maybe the other so-called “miracles” are, too.Maybe they are just tales designed to teach
us a lesson.If that’s the case, then,
the authors are simply using Jesus as a tool for instruction, not some image of
the divine.

To evade such a disaster, believers
insisting on the rectitude of the Bible are forced to swear by a devilish idea
long discredited.For good measure, they
then have to disregard all the scientific research in such fields as geology,
astronomy, anthropology, archaeology and the like that undermine biblical
accounts. In fact, they are obligated to live in complete ignorance.

That’s one devil that really needs
to be cast out.

Long-time
religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious
history.He also speaks at various
religious organizations throughout Florida.You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.He is the author of the famed Unauthorized
Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel
Writers Get Their Information; Noel:
The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols;and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion.His most recent book is Passover in Prison, which
details abuse of Jewish inmates in American prisons.His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.He can also be followed on Twitter.

You
can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at
http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

About Me

During his career, Bill has been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, advertising copywriter and writer/editor of NASCAR programs, among other jobs. He has won three international awards for stories and programs while working for International Speedway Corp. and was named 2000 Florida Feature Writer of the Year.
He has published four books to date and his writing has appeared in hundreds of local, regional, state and national publications.